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"The story of Chinese Americans through the lens of food. From Canton Restaurant in 1849 to Panda Express today, Chinese food history in America spans over 150 years. Chinese 'Forty-niners' were mostly merchants and restaurateurs who migrated here not to dig gold but to do trade. Racism against the Chinese slowed down the growth of the Chinese restaurant business in the late 19th century, but it made a rebound in the format of chop suey. From 1900 to the 1960s, chop suey as imagined authentic Chinese food attracted numerous American customers including Jewish Americans as its collective fan. Then the real Chinese food such as Hunan, Sichuan or Shanghai cuisine replaced chop suey houses in the 1970s following the arrival of new Chinese immigrants after immigration reform in 1965. Those regional-flavored Chinese restaurants were brought in and established by immigrants from Taiwan rather than mainland China. As Chinese restaurants in America turned Chinese in flavor, P.F. Chang's and Panda Express rose fast in the 1990s to meet the need of constantly changing and often multi-ethnically blended eating habits of American customers. Chinese food in America is a fascinating history about both Chinese and Americans. Embedded in this history is the story of human migration, culinary tradition, racial politics, ethnic identity, cultural negotiation, Chinese Diaspora and transnational life, and Chinese cuisine as a global food. Though a scholarly work, this book aims at all readers who are interested in food history and culture"--Provided by publisher

Intro -- Contents -- Introduction -- Chapter 1: Origins of the Chang Family -- Chapter 2: Yitang as a Merchant Immigrant -- Chapter 3: Herbal Medicine as a Transplanted Culture -- Chapter 4: Between Troubled Home and Racist America -- Chapter 5: Asparagus Farming as a Family Business -- Chapter 6: Education as a Family Agenda -- Chapter 7: China as a Cultural Home -- Genealogical Chart: The Chang Family Tree -- Index -- About the Author.

A harmonious family of three generations living under one roof is often an assumed image of a Chinese traditional family. In reality, few Chinese families resemble this image. My article uses the Chung family history to illustrate how a family in rural Guangdong, South China, experienced a fast social ascent or descent in one generation. Its history reveals many aspects of Chinese family tradition, such as filial piety, equal inheritance system among sons, or education as an important family agenda. The rise and fall of this family also helps us understand the competitive social environment of Guangdong that sent hundreds of thousand immigrants overseas in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century. When some members of the Chung family migrated overseas, other members followed. The Chung lineage, similar to numerous Cantonese immigrant families in America, became transnational in culture.

AbstractSince c.1900, eating Chinese food has become a weekly routine, a Christmas tradition, and a childhood memory for many Jewish American families. In their adaptation to American society, Jewish Americans made eating Chinese part of their American identity. The evolution and change in Chinese food and Jewish eating habits took place almost simultaneously. While Chinese immigrants invented chopsuey and other popular Americanized Chinese dishes, Jewish residential proximity to New York Chinatown allowed many Jewish immigrants and their families to frequent Chinese restaurants and become familiar with Chinese food. Based on a review of articles published in newspapers and popular journals in New York and scholarly writings on food history, this article explains how and why Jewish customers were attracted to Chinese food, and describes the dynamic interaction between the two cultures in an attempt to addresses the complexity of American ethnic identity.